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Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Review

Testing:

The Intel Core 2 Quad 9300 processor will be put through our benchmarking suite to see what kind of performance the motherboard delivers. The OverclockersClub series of benchmarks include both system tests and gaming benchmarks to verify the performance of this product. Testing will include a direct comparison of several processors, including stock speed benchmarking. CPU clockspeed will be kept at the manufacturer specified clock speed and multiplier for the baseline testing. All motherboard and video card settings were left at setup defaults, again to eliminate any variables. The overclocking phase of the testing will be accomplished by using all of the available settings on the motherboard to gain the maximum performance from the latest Intel Core 2 Quad, the 9300.

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 9300 456 x 7.5

Sytem Memory:Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-5-5-12

Overclocking each processor is different. With five identical processors you will get five different results. With this Q9300, 456x7.5 was the point at which it was prime95 stable. It would run benchmarks at up to 470x7.5 but was nowhere near stable. Above 456 FSB, the amount of voltage to keep the chip running was significantly more than what other 45nm processors I have tested have taken at similar FSB and raw clock speeds. At 1.55 volts there was no point trying to even push further. The good news is that the CPU would do almost 450 FSB on the stock 1.215 volts. I left the volts at 1.34v during my testing just as a safeguard but have since lowered this to 1.31v at 456 FSB. Pretty low volts for the clock speeds I was able to pull from the little brother of the QX9770. Having a motherboard that will allow high front side bus speeds with a quad core processor is essential with the Q9300 CPU. Raw clock speed is limited because of the low 7.5 clock multiplier. In order to reach 3.6GHz you would need to hit 480FSB, something not all quad core CPUs will do, some, but not all.